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Hitchhiker's Guide Quandary Phase Starts May 3rd
MilenCent writes "Time to grab your towels once again! BBC Radio 4 is set to begin the Quandary Phase (that is, the fourth) of the radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on May 3, covering the events of So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. Once again you'll be able to listen to it on the web from Radio 4's site. There's a production diary on BBC Radio 4's website that discusses the Quandary and Quintessential Phases, which will each be four episodes and will deviate further from the books than the Tertiary Phase did (it may not end the same way it did in Mostly Harmless), as well as tie up loose ends from the first two phases. In other news, their illustrated version of the Hitchhiker's text game won a BAFTA! They also have an interview with the game's co-creator, Steve Meretzky, who also created Planetfall."
This is worth my licence fee alone. fortuntely I also get 5 TV channels, 2 news channels, and more radio channels than I can count. Anyone who says commercial radio is better is just plain wrong.
Steve Meretzky is one hoopy frood.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Paramount has announced they will do a radio version of the HHGTTG that is available only in mono (not stereo) and in which all of the jokes have been made unfunny.
...
The series will be cancelled six weeks into its 13-week series due to Lack of Interest by listeners.
.
.
Well, I wouldn't put it past them
Will in Seattle
In case anyone's wondering, BAFTA is the The British Academy of Film and Television Arts. They give awards sort of like the Oscar, only without quite as poor a sense of judgement.
I'm not sure why an 'academy of film and television arts' thinks they're particularly qualified to judge interactive media though...
. . . to declare adding illustrations to a classic Infocom game blasphemy.
Your IP address is . . . oh, that's right, I don't know how to do that.
I'm a herring you insensitive cod!
The books are short enough that you shouldn't have a problem grabbing the first book and reading it.
Then you can form your own opinion about the series, as any answer you get will be someone elses opinion.
Sorry, did I say something wrong? Pardon me for breathing which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, Oh God I'm so depressed.
HHGG is really a parody of science fiction, or at least, science fiction written primarily for comdedic effect... or... really it's comedy that happens to be science fiction.
Ok, listen, it isn't really any of those things. It's a deep parable of man and his nonsensical attempts to control the uncontrollable universe.
And it has some good bits about robots and artificial inteligence.
Oh, fark it, just read the damn thing. If you've are somewhat intelligent and a sense of humor, you like it.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
>what is it about?
RTFBSome mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Adams is a literary genius. It took over 5 years of prodding before I actually sat down and read the book, but then I was hooked. That was only months ago. I strongly recommend you go buy a copy and read it. Get The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, which should be on the bargain shelf in hardback (blue dust cover) at Barnes & Noble, probably in clearance/preparation for a reprint to coincide with increased demand from the movie. It should cost you $15 or less, and won't take more than two weeks to read all five books even if you're a slow reader like I am.
I really can't describe it with words - I'm not the writer Adams was, clearly - but all I can say is that you owe it to yourself to read at least the first book. If you don't like it, that's fine, but I suspect you will.
What's it about, though? Life, the universe, and everything about sums it up. Read it and find out.
Your brilliant failure to use a question mark, inability to punctuate the colloquialism "I mean" appropriately, and decision to misspell "repetitive" belie a deeper appreciation for the English language than the average Hitchhiker's Guide fan possesses. Maybe that's why you didn't like the sequels.
Ok, listen, it isn't really any of those things. It's a deep parable of man and his nonsensical attempts to control the uncontrollable universe.
I'll have to pick it up. It sounds like Catch-22 (the humor and the deep parable of man and his nonsensical attempts to control the uncontrollable).
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
From The New Zork Times, Spring 1984:
4. Why don't your games have graphics?
We have nothing against graphics per se. However, given the quality of graphics currently available on home computers, we would rather use that disk space for additional puzzles and richer descriptions. After all, as our famous "brain ad" says, the world's best graphics generator is your own imagination.
enter disk
cat
What should I tell them about the Babel Fish puzzle?" He said, "What should you tell them? Tell them to f*** off!" So the puzzle stayed... and its very difficulty became a cult thing.
Damn, that was a fun game that sucked up weeks of my life.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Adams is the seventh Python. He wrote a number of the sketches for the original Monty Python series, as well as being a close friend of the Pythons themselves, having attended Cambridge together. Terry Jones even wrote Douglas' Starship Titanic novel for him.
If you like Python, you will love h2g2.
I know I can listen to them legally live (Being a UK licence payer with t'internet and Digital radio), but I have a nasty habit of missing these things. Anyone know of a site that torrents all these?
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
My thanks to the British people for paying for the wonderful thing that is the BBC. I think i'll take BBC radio 4 with me to a deserted island.
Maybe they should put a paypal donate link on their homepage. I'll do anything to keep enjoying this forever.
I liked the Tertiary Phase, but it was pretty much identical to Life, the Universe, and Everything and didn't really provide much new entertainment. I especially think that changing the ending to Mostly Harmless is a good idea. I was never comfortable with that (no spoilers here). And tying up loose ends are good as well....what did ever happen to Lintilla?
1) Grab RA WAV Recorder
2) Open this location with it, at the appropriate time: BBC4 radio feed. Last September, it played Tuesdays at 10:30AM on the west coast (US).
3) Convert WAV, if you want to (or put right to CD for the car).
4) Profit (no, not really)
Just tried it again, to make sure the address hadn't changed, and it still seems to work great!
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
I like Adams, but I like Lem more. I guess it maybe because I read Lem earlier - it clicked better.
If you like THGTTG you should read Stanislaw Lem's
The Star Diaries - with the main character Ion Tihiy (Ion Quiet,) you will not regret it.
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe I'm missing some sublety of the Queen's English, but I thought the fourth in a series is the QUATERNARY and the fifth is the QUINARY.
Please enlighten me if I'm missing the joke or something. They do identify the previous phase as the TERTIARY.
You're missing the joke. A quandary is a "state of uncertainty or perplexity", and something that is quintessential "[represents] the perfect example of a class or quality." They're puns, in other words (ahaha).
Indeed. Also, being the fourth book of a trilogy does result in quite a quandry.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
...get yourself to your local public library and request to borrow the audio recording produced by the BBC back in the 70s. They will likely be cassettes (yes, dammit, cassettes) but if you're really lucky, it might be a copy of the original broadcast which, to nutters such as myself, would rank you way up there. While the books are funny-ish (for literary teehees you must admit), the radio play not only pre-dates them, but as a working, successful form of comedy, out performs them. About 27 minutes, per episode, its an easy format to enjoy on-demand. Wear headphones. Thumbs up. Win awards!
No, no, no. Listen to the first two radio series. Then read all the books. THEN listen to the new radio series.
Disregarding my personal dislike of the new radio serious, radio-then-books seems like a much better order to do things in to me. Radio will leave gaps which your imagination can fill as well as providing a much more condensed, rich experience. The books will fill those gaps. The other way around is less entertaining. Also, this is the way they were originally presented.
qntm.org
It is meant to be a pun -- they're quite popular in British humour ;-)